British Airways has hit back at its low-cost airline rivals by effectively cutting fares on dozens of domestic and international European routes. But how easy will it be to get seats at these prices? And will the long-term result be less competition as rivals are forced to drop services?
The new deals start at £59 return within the UK and £69 from London to Paris if bought via the airline's website (british-airways.com). Passengers booking by telephone will pay a £10 supplement. The fares are also available to destinations in Italy, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and to some other French cities - and BA says more will be added during the summer.
Although the airline already offered fares around these levels, they were generally accompanied by restrictions or on sale only for limited periods. Now BA, which dipped a toe in the water with a similar move on some domestic routes in April, has removed Saturday night stay and advance purchase requirements and made such deals available year round.
The move is part of a wider trend. Last week, bmi British Midland announced it was axing minimum-stay requirements and moving to a simpler system of one-way fares. Chief executive officer Austin Reid said experience with its own low-cost operator bmibaby has shown that this was what customers wanted.
BA says that "more than 50,000 seats a month" will be bookable at the lowest fares on the 71 routes on which they are available. BA was unable to say what proportion of total seats that would represent but a crude calculation suggests a figure below 5%.
The deals will be hardest to get on midweek flights in the morning and evening peaks, when seats are most in demand from business travellers. The move is partly an attempt to woo back such passengers, some of whom have been drawn away by the budget airlines, by offering them lower fares if they fly on less popular services. But the airline says customers will be allowed to combine peak and off-peak fares to get the best possible price on flights which fit their schedules.
BA's head of sales, Tiffany Hall, said: "This is very much a fight back against the low-cost carriers. What we are basically doing is offering full service flights at no-frills prices."
The no-frills carriers will argue that they are still cheaper. Ryanair's commercial director Michael Cawley said: "Their lowest fares from London are twice ours to Milan, for example, and three times as much to Bologna, Verona and Stockholm."
Comparisons are trickier than that, however. Visitors to Ryanair's website this week would have found that its cheapest deals could be booked only during a very limited period and were valid only for flights between Monday and Thursday.
Whatever the budget airlines claim, BA's move will put them under more intense competitive pressure, not least because other mainstream, higher-cost airlines may be forced to follow its lead. The great unanswerable is whether - and to what extent - it will damage their business.
